DCoder
18.10.2008, 19:48:00
There's not going to be a Tertiary= or Quaternary= weapon in Ares, or anything remotely similar. What is going to be in it, though, is much better.
There are related issues to resolve, such as AlternateFLH (which actually occupies the same data slots as FLH of weapons 13-18 in the unmodded game). This one is fairly simple.
Harder than that will be creating an algorithm to choose which weapon to use in a particular situation, as well as untangling Ammo(which I don't intend to do right now...).
I do imagine I will end up adding a new section [WeaponSelection] defining how much weight to put on Damage+Verses, Range, and other criteria which I haven't realised yet... (If you want to see how the game does the selection right now, it's nothing fancy, just primary vs secondary - here you go, not shown are some type-specific extensions like deployment, hail Westwood's (in)consistency.)
*There was talk of a Veteran list as well, but I decided that the Veterancy changes will be a sufficient replacement for that.
Related IFV changes
Adding more IFV modes is complex due to the amount of hardcoding Westwood originally put in, such as magic turret names.
Replacing those will be harder, but doable. I do believe that a simple Weapon%dTurretIndex= would work, if you eliminate the lookup step of first finding which of the %sTurretIndex values equals the gunner's IFVMode and then taking that slot's weapon index, and instead say that IFVMode= simply forces Weapon%d to be used, and Weapon%dTurretIndex sets the index of the turret to use for that weapon. I'm not sure if that actually botches any existing IFV code, though...
Code:
[unit]
WeaponCount=25 ;unlimited, really, the unmodded game accepts up to 18 but doesn't use the slots above 2 except for an IFV
Weapon1=something
Weapon2=somethingelse
Weapon3=...
...
Weapon25=yetanotherweapon
EliteWeapon1=somethingE ; *
EliteWeapon2=somethingelseE
...
EliteWeapon25=yetanotherweaponEHarder than that will be creating an algorithm to choose which weapon to use in a particular situation, as well as untangling Ammo(which I don't intend to do right now...).
I do imagine I will end up adding a new section [WeaponSelection] defining how much weight to put on Damage+Verses, Range, and other criteria which I haven't realised yet... (If you want to see how the game does the selection right now, it's nothing fancy, just primary vs secondary - here you go, not shown are some type-specific extensions like deployment, hail Westwood's (in)consistency.)
*There was talk of a Veteran list as well, but I decided that the Veterancy changes will be a sufficient replacement for that.
Related IFV changes
Adding more IFV modes is complex due to the amount of hardcoding Westwood originally put in, such as magic turret names.
Replacing those will be harder, but doable. I do believe that a simple Weapon%dTurretIndex= would work, if you eliminate the lookup step of first finding which of the %sTurretIndex values equals the gunner's IFVMode and then taking that slot's weapon index, and instead say that IFVMode= simply forces Weapon%d to be used, and Weapon%dTurretIndex sets the index of the turret to use for that weapon. I'm not sure if that actually botches any existing IFV code, though...